2016 looks like a China shop after a visit from a very clumsy bull

Viewing 2016 in retrospect — doing so is unpleasant, but less so than was living through it — the year resembles a china shop after a visit from an especially maladroit bull. Because a law says “ t he state of California may not sell or display the Battle Flag of the Confederacy . . . or any similar image ,” a painting of the 1864 Siege of Atlanta was banned from display at the Fresno County fair. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services churned out a 25-page policy statement about “the systematic inclusion of families in activities and programs that promote children’s development, learning, and wellness. ” That is, government should provide, as an act of grace — systematic grace — a role for parents in raising their children.

Let freedom ring, in the nooks and crannies of the administrative state: One day a year — Lemonade Day — children in Austin can sell the stuff without spending $460 on various fees, licenses and permits. Twelve-year-olds in a Tampa middle school, learning about “how much privilege” they have, were asked if they were “Cisgendered,” “Transgendered” or “Genderqueer.” Two years after Emma was the most common name given to baby American girls, the trend was toward supposedly gender-neutral baby names (e.g., Lincoln, Max, Arlo) lest the child feel enslaved to stereotypes. A New Jersey mother says a police officer interrogated her 9-year-old son after he was suspected of a racial slur when he talked about brownies, the baked good. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission pondered whether a worker committed racial harassment by wearing a cap emblazoned with the Gadsden flag (depicting a coiled rattlesnake, with the words “Don’t Tread on Me”). A University of Iowa professor complained that the Hawkeyes’ mascot Herky, a fierce bird, is “conveying an invitation to aggressivity and even violence” that is discordant with the “all accepting, nondiscriminatory messages we are trying to convey.”